Life’s A Golf Course, So Start Swinging

Golf is a game of personal accomplishment. Just a little ball sitting there waiting for you to move it in a specific direction. If you do it successfully you get all the credit. If you don’t, you get all the blame. And it takes concentration and relaxation to be good at it

When you’re about to go perform, whatever you do, you’ve got to know the yardage, know which club you need, understand the feeling. This preparedness comes from the hours and hours of quiet practice away from the limelight; days and weeks and months of unrewarding and repetitive work that no-one will ever see. But you’ll know it’s there. And you’ll need it.

Samuel L Jackson

Life is a funny thing. It’s a great deal of things, in fact. However, one thing it should never be, is passive.

Life isn’t something that just happens. It’s whatever we make of it. While some people are genuinely happy to sit back and watch life go by, this is only because they have achieved all of their big goals, and now want a slower pace of life with which they can better enjoy their accomplishments and families. Until the rest of us reach that stage, we need to take a proactive approach to life.

We all know what we want to achieve in life. We know what we do and don’t like. We have an idea what a happy, fulfilled life looks like. Better yet, we know what we have to do to achieve our goals because there are no secrets in this respect. Hard work, perseverance, networking, gaining knowledge and skills and integrity. That’s not an exhaustive list, but they will certainly bring you a better quality of life if you adopt them all.

I’ve interviewed and worked with a great number of people who were unhappy with their lives and felt stuck in a rut. One thing that they all had in common was their approach to life. They were reacting to circumstances, and instead of working tirelessly for what they wanted, they were waiting for it all to fall into their lap. Which will never happen. They wanted all the good things and experiences, but were not doing anything constructive with their time in order to make that possible. They claimed that they were waiting for the right time or conditions before acting. This is, however, the quickest route to disappointment. Perfection does not exist, so you’ll be waiting an awfully long time for it. Time in which you could have been taking small, daily steps towards your goals, with the results already showing. This is, after all, how success is achieved. Small steps. Small wins. Every day. Over time there is a cumulative effect, and the small wins lead to huge achievement. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens as a result of the right actions and choices being made every day, consistently.

Like golf, the game of life takes countless hours of hard work and preparation. Not to mention the countless hours of practice while no one is watching. While everyone is out getting drunk, if you are serious about achieving greatly, you will be reflecting, planning and making minor changes to try and improve your performance. Things will not always go to plan. You will have failures and bad days. As with a professional golfer having a bad tournament, you don’t dwell on it and beat yourself up. You reflect on what happened, learn from it and make whatever changes you feel necessary in order to bounce back stronger. As any professional sportsman or woman will tell you, failures are a priceless learning experience, and can provide all the motivation and feedback you need to achieve great things.

Your life is like that little golf ball. Sit back and watch it, and you’ll notice that nothing happens. However, if you grab a club you will be able to send the ball in the direction which you want. The more time and effort you put in, the better you become at directing the ball. So is this true of life. When you decide where you want to go in life and what you want to achieve, magic happens when you get up and take action. And the more you plan, prepare, reflect and act, the better you will become at shaping your future.